North Carolina Tar Heels: Avoid Facing Christian McCaffrey

The North Carolina Tar Heels will be facing a short-handed Stanford team in the Sun Bowl.

Bowl season has come and gone for some teams already, but the North Carolina Tar Heels are ramping up for their upcoming Sun Bowl appearance against the Stanford Cardinal. Today they learned their job might be a little easier as 2015 Heisman finalist Christian McCaffrey has declared his intention to bypass the game in order to prepare for the NFL Draft.

This development hits the game the game in several ways. One, it makes the game less interesting of a draw for television viewers. CBS might have enjoyed the prospect to show the final game of McCaffrey’s college career. He was certainly the biggest name player in the game. Instead they will have to hype up Mitch Trubisky, who could be taken in the top ten picks of the NFL Draft. The problem is that Trubisky just isn’t that well known.

The second thing is it prevents the connections from the two schools from being made. McCaffrey is the brother of Duke alum Max McCaffrey, so brother won’t be able to help brother extend bragging rights.

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Third, it prevents a matchup of the two most versatile weapons in college football. McCaffrey is a running back and return man, but used in a variety of ways on the Stanford offense. Ryan Switzer has combined his return game prowess with an effective receiver role. He also has run the ball on occasion for the Heels.

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McCaffrey becomes the second running back to bow out of a non playoff bowl game. Leonard Fournette of LSU did so earlier and will not play in the Citrus Bowl. The rationale seems to be to avoid injury risk and jump start the process for getting ready for the draft. Fournette also lost his coach, something that McCaffrey did not.

The game should still be one of the better bowl matchups with two teams of contrasting styles. They will play on December 30 at 2:00 PM.